Period of Grace
by Ammar K
Summary: Nine and Ten both share a burden. When Ten doesn't immediately forget after he leaves the National Gallery, he starts to wonder if there is a loose end left for him to tie up. There is. Spoilers for The Day of the Doctor.


**Period of Grace**

Summary: Nine and Ten both share a burden. When Ten doesn't immediately forget after he leaves the National Gallery, he starts to wonder if there is a loose end left for him to tie up. There is. Spoilers for The Day of the Doctor.

* * *

"I won't remember this, will I," says War, as he's begun to think of him. And still a Doctor, still the Doctor, for all that regeneration's spent his time pushing back against the name, refusing to claim it. Rejecting it.

Clara (oh, he's looking forward to the day he'll actually _meet_ her) knows more than he would have expected; he'd asked his Eleventh self previously, and merely received an arched eyebrow and a cool, "Spoilers." Still, Clara, Clara Oswald, she's the one who knew about the promise, who reminded him, who asked him what it _meant._

It means different things to each of them; "Never cruel or cowardly," he says, remembering a screaming, tortured Dalek in a collection so long ago, remembering a different man, a different self, shorn-headed, and all that _anger_ and still he shoots back the retort, "_Coward every time,"_ because he's made the choice once, and once was evil enough to break him, evil too heavy for his shoulders. _Because sometimes, you need someone to stop you,_ memory-Donna Noble says. He's a different man now but the anger is no less a part of him; the burden of guilt and grief and sorrow is a familiar companion.

Almost after him, almost a continuation, War says, softly, "Never give up, never give in." And with a jolt, he remembers being that man, broken from long years of killing and struggle across space and time and worlds and ready to press the button because that's all there is left for Gallifrey; the gates of Hell, and even though he can't count the children, he will break the seals, he will open the hot gates. Until two faces from his future, until Clara Oswald gives him _hope_.

"The time streams are out of sync. You can't retain it," Eleven confirms what they all know, what they all suspect, with a regretful shake of his head. He envies him, just a little; Eleven who will remember, Eleven who might just feel all that _weight_ lift from his shoulders, Eleven who can't remember how many (_2.47 billion_) children there were on Gallifrey the day it burned because to remember even after four hundred years is to acknowledge he's still a man with the weight of a planet across his shoulders (the mass of Gallifrey is 0.0583 Kairon mass, the weight can be calculated based on the gravitational acceleration on Gallifrey, and he's carrying all of that with him) and over the years it will crush him, smash him to the ground unless he runs and doesn't remember.

Gallifrey is a stone in his heart; the memory is as fresh as the day he stood and lived as his world and his people _burned_ with the Daleks, and he envies his Eleventh self _that_; the ability to go on knowing he _tried_ to set things right—that he has something to set against the regrets, the occasional nightmare, the self-hatred, the guilt, all these accumulated burdens gathered across the outrage of the years because maybe they've done it _right_; maybe he's saved people, maybe Gallifrey _stands_.

And yet he knows this is exactly what he needs; redemption, expiation, even for a single moment, even if he can't hold on to it, even if the moment in which the guilt and hate and grief and sorrow melt away, leaving him with ephemeral, effervescent joy that he can't quite manage to keep in the middle of the uncertainty, because he's spent all those moments wondering if it could be different and now he knows it can and that he _has _made a different choice, but they've cut through the Gordian knot, all three of them and Clara Oswald and the way lies open before him, for a single shining moment:

A way to be good again.

* * *

He stared at his Barcelonian fizz-whisky, threw out the cheerful canary-yellow umbrella in it (after he'd moodily chewed on the accompanying banana slice), and wondered if he should have gotten something else to drink. Barcelonian fizz-whisky was _horrible_ if you wanted to even pretend to try to get absolutely smashed; Barcelona, he mused, a planet where they had dogs with no noses, and whisky without a single drop of alcohol in it.

It would've taken more than even a regular Irish whisky to get a Time Lord properly soused, anyway, and he wasn't all that keen on it.

Not too bad a track record, he thought. First time this regeneration he'd asked someone if they'd like to come along in the TARDIS, and she hadn't been interested. It didn't matter, really, except she'd been quite something, hadn't she? Swinging on that rope, all determined-like, freeing him and destroying the Nestene Consciousness in one fell swoop. Quite an audition, even though he hadn't been looking. He sipped his Barcelonian fizz-whisky and winced at how cloyingly sweet it was. "Figures," he muttered aloud. Just another of those things this regeneration clearly didn't like. It hadn't been too long ago since he'd regenerated, the sole survivor of the Time War, and all that had been on his mind then was getting _away_ from the memories, even though galaxies and all of time wasn't enough to forget.

He scowled. Stuck in a bar with a Barcelonian fizz-whisky he didn't even like anymore, with the memories of the Time War breathing down his neck. Just what he needed, thank you very much.

_You're sure,_ the Moment says, eyes burning a bright liquid gold.

_Yes,_ he says, nothing more_._ He pushes down on the big red button, really shoves it like he means it because he _does_ and he has to, or he'll never live with it for the rest of his life even though she's told him he'll have to. Funny how he can't remember how the interface projection looks like now; it's insignificant next to the faces of the children burning, screaming as the galaxy eater crunches through Gallifrey and the entire star system.

Always the children. Suffer the children. The children suffer.

The fizz-whisky didn't taste any better with the next sip. It's too viscous, and when he shook the glass, the cobalt-blue liquid stirred only slowly, threatening to congeal. No, he thought, just another human, nothing special, maybe next time, except that Rose Tyler had struck something inside him, that howling empty space he carries with him from the Time War, the part of him that knows he's so horrifically _alone_ now, the last of his kind, there's no more left, they're all gone, all _gone_ and he's the one who did it.

The loneliness stirred, and it's not so easily forced back down or forgotten; with it came _longing_.

"Hello!" He looked up to see who's sat down beside him at the bar, sized him up in a glance. Absolutely skinny, he thought, with a shock of light brown hair, a grin that's far too wide, pinstriped suit with an utterly ridiculous tie and a soft brown long coat. "Don't suppose you're still drinking that, are you?" Skinny, as he's nicknamed him in his head reached over and deftly plucked the Barcelonian fizz-whisky from him and drank it.

"Oi!" he growled half-heartedly. "Go get your own drink, why don't you?"

"You don't even _like_ Barcelonian fizz-whiskies," retorted Skinny, shielding it from his grab with the crook of his arm, "and I've always thought you can't steal from yourself_. _What's a bit of sharing between regenerations, eh?"

He froze; stared at Skinny, not sure whether to groan or to put his head in his hands. He'd never seen _that_ look in the mirror before, which meant…which meant that at some point in his future, he's going to become a skinny drink-stealing pretty boy who evidently likes Barcelonian fizz-whiskies. "You've got to be kidding me," he grumbled, except Skinny produced, from an inside pocket of his pinstriped suit, a sonic screwdriver almost exactly identical to his.

Their eyes met; in that moment, he _knew_. Skinny's eyes were far older. Yet for the first time, he thought he saw something in them that he hadn't seen in the mirror for a long time: hope. He looked away.

"So, do I get a reason why you've done something as incredibly _stupid_ as crossing your own time stream?" he threw out.

Skinny slipped the sonic screwdriver away and idly stirred his appropriated drink with a finger. "Well," he said, licking that finger, "Sometimes, there are good reasons to break the rules. Pretty good, yeah, I would say."

He scowled. "These reasons of yours being?"

"It's still recent for you, isn't it," Skinny said, more than asked. His voice was soft.

He didn't need to ask what 'it' was. "Yeah."

"What if I told you," Skinny said, "That there was a way to fix it?"

His head shot up. "Gallifrey—the whole Time War—is timelocked. There _isn't_ another way. There never was."

Skinny's dark eyes were manic, compelling. The Barcelonian fizz-whisky sat there, forgotten. "There is a way. We found it. All of us. I didn't actually think it'd work, I've got to admit. But all things considered, a rather good job considering we've been doing the calculations all our lives. Kind of embarrassing to mess something like that up, I'd say."

"I _burned_ Gallifrey, and the Dalek fleet. All of them," he snarled, feeling the pain uncurl itself in his chest. "They died, and I know what I did!"

A flicker of compassion passed Skinny's serious face. He didn't want that either. "I'm sorry," Skinny said, quietly. "I'm so sorry. You don't remember, of course. None of us will." And then there was something else there; a dark envy, but so fleeting he almost thought he'd imagined it. He knew he hadn't; the darkness was there nonetheless. He hadn't let it in so much as realised it'd been there all along. "Our time streams are out of sync. You'd have forgotten it in the regeneration, I suppose. I'm surprised I haven't forgotten, myself."

"Forgotten what?"

"There is another way," Skinny said again. "We've been doing the calculations, what it would take to shift Gallifrey into a pocket universe, like one of our paintings. Like a stasis cube." He remembered now; it had been an idle curiosity once, in his distant youth, suggested by a girl whose face he couldn't quite remember. For some reason, it'd nagged at him, and he'd been doing the calculations, and had doggedly kept at it even now, even now when Gallifrey was lost and gone.

"You mean…?" He almost couldn't speak then; felt his hearts in his mouth with his tongue all at once, the hollow space in his chest aching. "_Of course_. If Gallifrey was sealed away, frozen in a single moment of time…"

"…then the Dalek fleet would destroy itself in the crossfire," finished Skinny, grinning widely. "I know. Brilliant, isn't it?" Finally, he picked up the fizz-whisky again, eyed it, and then set it back down.

"Yeah, fantastic. But it's too late," he said, frustrated. "It's all gone now, and timelocked."

"It isn't," Skinny said. "Look, would you just shut up a moment? I don't know how much time I've got left before the forgetfulness catches up with me too. Thank you. So, where was I? The last day of the Time War's not timelocked. I know, because _I was there_. I went back to the Fall of Arcadia, bit of a bother, mind you, and all just to make our way into a painting to stop Kate Lethbridge-Stewart from blowing up half the planet …but anyway, long story, that's not the bit that matters. Point is, we were there in Gallifrey's last hours. All of us. Even you. Get it? The thing is, the time streams aren't in sync."

"Yeah, you've said that already," he muttered. Can't shut up either, that's who he's going to become.

"Oh, for goodness' sake," Skinny retorted. "_That's_ why you didn't remember trying to save Gallifrey. That's why you think—we think," he corrected himself, "That we pushed the button and used the Moment. We didn't."

He reached over, seized the fizz-whisky from Skinny, and took a long sip. Winced at the taste. _There is a way,_ Skinny had said, and the more he thought about it, the more he _believed_. The truth was, he wanted to. The memories of the Time War were too fresh, too recent. He'd have done anything in a heartbeat to take back the choice he'd made to use the Moment, and now he drowned the reflexive anger that arose at the suggestion it hadn't really happened, he'd only imagined the screams of dying Gallifreyan children. He drew in a long, deep breath. Squared his shoulders. "Alright," he said. "So, I need to take the TARDIS and go back to Gallifrey, on the last day of the Time War. And do my bit. Is that it?"

"Yuppp," said Skinny, drawing out the last sound. "Oh, and before I forget—I don't really suppose you'll forget _this_, at any rate. Tell her it also travels in time, will you?"

"Her?"

Skinny just grinned. "You'll figure it out," he said. His eyes, however, were distant and sad. He downed the last of the Barcelonian fizzy-whisky and stood up. "C'mon. Time to go, Ears."

"Oi!" he shot, resisting the urge to reach up to feel his ears. Were they really that conspicuous? "Watch it, Skinny."

He'd parked the TARDIS in a discreet alley near the bar; as he walked towards it, it wasn't long before he saw a second TARDIS, right next to his. "Well," said Skinny beside him, strolling onward, hands in his coat pocket. "There's my ride." He regarded him with a brief smile. "Guess this is it, eh?"

"Figure so," he said. "So, you going to tell me how old you are?"

Skinny regarded him for a long while in silence. He said, "Nine hundred and four." He turned and walked into his TARDIS.

* * *

He walked into his TARDIS, feeling slightly pleased with himself. He'd expected to forget, almost immediately, except he hadn't, and it had gradually nagged at him until he'd found himself stranded in the vicinity of Xelis V—great bar, absolutely horrible food, they didn't even have chips or proper vinegar—and then a distant, vague memory stirred when he'd picked up on the TARDIS parked in that alley.

Maybe he'd made a mistake, he thought, he still remembered, and he wasn't about to look a gift horse in the mouth.

"So, where to, now?" he said aloud, to the empty console room. A brief detour to Xelis V, he wasn't sure whatever had made him think it was a good idea—bad idea, dodging an Ood while hammered. Did he even want to get hammered? He made a face. "No," he said aloud. "Probably not a good idea."

A fleeting thought passed his mind; he knew better than to chase it, as he darted around the console room, setting new coordinates into the TARDIS. "Well, I'm back," he said, flipping down the lever. It was time for an adventure, something that would take him far, far away from the Ood and his summons. "Allons-y!"

* * *

He's back in a day he never thought he'd see again, until he ran into a face yet to come in a bar. It sounds like the beginning of a really bad joke: two Doctors meet in a bar.

Patched in to the War Council's transmissions, he sends his TARDIS neatly flipping around another; doesn't know who he missed, doesn't care. They won't collide, it's impossible. They know what each other is doing well enough for that—after all, they're really the same person.

He's been running the calculations in his brain for the better part of his life; he sees where the task can be broken up, where it _has_ been broken up by his other selves, the other blue fuzzy figures in the transmission windows projected in the War Council. He catches a flash of Skinny and old faces among them; new ones too. Nine-hundred-and-four said Skinny, and he realises now that it feels as though he's running on borrowed time.

Shouldn't have asked.

"Now for my next trick," he murmurs, slamming down the lever. The TARDIS slips into position—he's got this, he's got this, and now he's grinning from ear to ear, even though part of him is focused on the problem at hand, because it's an unexpected gift, the chance to take back the choice he's regretted since this regeneration, to make things _right_, to do things again and get them right this time. All the guilt lodged in his heart slips off him; he doesn't realise how _free_ he feels, how astonishingly light he feels until he breathes. It doesn't matter, he thinks, even if he can only hold on to this memory for a single moment—knowing that he chose not to push the button, he chose a wild, mad plan that might _save all those lives_—a single moment is all he needs.

Now.

The Dalek fleet is closing in around Gallifrey, intensifying its fire.

The planet, his homeworld, shifts—

There is an explosion of light; the shockwave buffets the TARDIS, flares out in space like a flat disc, sends it spiralling away as he struggles to regain control. The Dalek fleet is scattered, destroyed—

Where Gallifrey was, there is empty space.

He doesn't know if it _worked_, but his hearts hammer wildly in his chest, it's a mad, mad hope, and he grins and whoops because he'll hold on to it anyway—for this moment.

The TARDISes are disappearing, one by one. There's a transmission from one of them; he almost ignores it, but opens the link in the end.

He's surprised to find out it's not from one of them after all. Instead, the words hang in the air before him, reading:

BAD WOLF.

He frowns at the words. "What, exactly, are you about?" he mutters. No way to trace these; they don't have any origin to speak of. Probably an after-effect of translating Gallifrey into a pocket universe, he thinks, as he goes about setting new coordinates. Where will he go to next? Maybe Barcelona; this time of the year's always an excellent choice for Barcelona—even if it isn't, he can always pick a time when it _is_.

Almost unbidden, his counterpart's words come back into his head.

_Tell her it also travels in time._

He's not surprised to find that he's already locked in on a particular time and place; specifically, somewhere he's just departed from under twenty-four hours ago in personal subjective time, bare seconds ago according to when he's popping up again.

As far as he's concerned, he's got another shot at things, an unexpected second chance. It's going to be _fantastic._

* * *

"_By the way," he says, as casually as he can, "Did I mention it also travels in time?"_

_She runs._


End file.
